Talking Balance with David Kim - Page 36

On April 28 2012 06:33 Plansix wrote:


It wouldnt help. They informed people on Bnet that terrans were, in fact, not disappearing from the ladder. The response was people freaking out and challenging them, posting links of SCranks. Blizzard can't win no matter what they say or what data they release.

On April 28 2012 09:43 Berk wrote:


So what you are saying is that the community brought more statisical data to the table than blizzard.
I find it funny that you think it's a bad thing that players are using facts and blizzard are bring unquantifiable statements.... apart from the matchmaking system thats based around forcing players to have a 50% win ratio is delivery that.
And yeah.... where did all the terrans go?

On April 28 2012 09:51 Plansix wrote:


I am saying the information they provided is mostly bull shit or just stuff they pulled because they want the myth of the disappearing terrans to be true.

http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/4254523958?page=16#314

The quotes are:

"There seems to be this perception that terran players are fleeing the ladder, when that's not true at all.

I can tell you that the percentage of terran players (in terms of number of players choosing the race) is actually slightly higher this year than it was at the same time last year. The top 500 is also very close to evenly split between the three races as well.

Just some food for thought!"

and

"The stereotype of terran players populating bronze and then falling off in representation isn't reflected by reality, and the anecdotal reports I've seen regarding opponents encountered on the ladder are just that - anecdotal.

Those experiences aren't a comprehensive snapshot of the whole, they're a thin slice of the cookie. Even if the chocolate chips are evenly distributed, you might not get as many in your particular slice.

Mmmm, cookies.

I know what I'm doing for lunch"

Blizzard stated that their information is incorrect. They own the ladder and would have better information that any forum poster in any community. I see no reason to believe people who just go on SC2 ranks and pull out a bunch of questionable numbers and then say that it somehow is better than the information provided by the people who own the ladder. There is no reason for Blizzard to mislead people about this.

So what you are saying is that the community brought more statisical data to the table than blizzard.
I find it funny that you think it's a bad thing that players are using facts and blizzard are bring unquantifiable statements.... apart from the matchmaking system thats based around forcing players to have a 50% win ratio is delivery that.
And yeah.... where did all the terrans go?

On April 28 2012 09:54 HTOMario wrote:


Except to retain players in wings of liberty and keep hyping heart of the swarm for more profit in the long term? As the more active players there are that watch tournaments, blizzard keeps profiting. I think you forgot that they are a business first.

On April 28 2012 09:51 Plansix wrote:


I am saying the information they provided is mostly bull shit or just stuff they pulled because they want the myth of the disappearing terrans to be true.

http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/4254523958?page=16#314

The quotes are:

"There seems to be this perception that terran players are fleeing the ladder, when that's not true at all.

I can tell you that the percentage of terran players (in terms of number of players choosing the race) is actually slightly higher this year than it was at the same time last year. The top 500 is also very close to evenly split between the three races as well.

Just some food for thought!"

and

"The stereotype of terran players populating bronze and then falling off in representation isn't reflected by reality, and the anecdotal reports I've seen regarding opponents encountered on the ladder are just that - anecdotal.

Those experiences aren't a comprehensive snapshot of the whole, they're a thin slice of the cookie. Even if the chocolate chips are evenly distributed, you might not get as many in your particular slice.

Mmmm, cookies.

I know what I'm doing for lunch"

Blizzard stated that their information is incorrect. They own the ladder and would have better information that any forum poster in any community. I see no reason to believe people who just go on SC2 ranks and pull out a bunch of questionable numbers and then say that it somehow is better than the information provided by the people who own the ladder. There is no reason for Blizzard to mislead people about this.

On April 28 2012 10:01 Sumadin wrote:



Sigh i find it sad when people try to compare Blizzards data to that of a 3rd party site. Thing is mate why would Blizzard bother lying? They are the Judge, jury and executor in terms of SC2 balance. They could be showing a 80-20 TvP and claiming they still wanna wait out on the protoss to explore tech options, and you would be able to do NOTHING.

Btw since noone else does any research around here, look at this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OYTt_8zYHI
It explains very well how they get their adjusted winrates. It really doesn't matter if you think it is a reliable method, all you need to know is that those are the stats they use to determine ladder balance.

On April 28 2012 10:04 aksfjh wrote:

Except we don't know how they qualify those statements. For all we know, it could mean that Terrans get placed every season, then stop playing, but it's enough to count for Blizzard's "census." On the other hand, there's an overwhelming consensus that *vT on ladder isn't played as often as *vZ and *vP, even if it is "anecdotal."

On April 28 2012 09:51 Plansix wrote:


I am saying the information they provided is mostly bull shit or just stuff they pulled because they want the myth of the disappearing terrans to be true.

http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/4254523958?page=16#314

The quotes are:

"There seems to be this perception that terran players are fleeing the ladder, when that's not true at all.

I can tell you that the percentage of terran players (in terms of number of players choosing the race) is actually slightly higher this year than it was at the same time last year. The top 500 is also very close to evenly split between the three races as well.

Just some food for thought!"

and

"The stereotype of terran players populating bronze and then falling off in representation isn't reflected by reality, and the anecdotal reports I've seen regarding opponents encountered on the ladder are just that - anecdotal.

Those experiences aren't a comprehensive snapshot of the whole, they're a thin slice of the cookie. Even if the chocolate chips are evenly distributed, you might not get as many in your particular slice.

Mmmm, cookies.

I know what I'm doing for lunch"

Blizzard stated that their information is incorrect. They own the ladder and would have better information that any forum poster in any community. I see no reason to believe people who just go on SC2 ranks and pull out a bunch of questionable numbers and then say that it somehow is better than the information provided by the people who own the ladder. There is no reason for Blizzard to mislead people about this.

On April 28 2012 08:22 Sergio1992 wrote:
The only thing that should be addressed about tvp lategame, is the amount of non-micro the protoss must do. That should be improved, mixed together with the scaling efficiency of being cost effective while the units are being microed.

On April 28 2012 10:14 Plansix wrote:


The statements don't need to be qualified, they are simple and easy to follow. They state that the "perception that terran players are fleeing the ladder, when that's not true at all." It is not true, terrans are not fleeing the ladder. It is a myth, created because terrans who want to argue that terran is under powered at specific skill levels. The reason this myth is so appealing is that it allows them to argue that their race is under powered, even when professional terrans are winning or ranking highly tournaments.

On April 28 2012 09:40 xrapture wrote:
only thing i don't like about the game is that when zerg or protoss has a massive advantage, they can just a move and win (like it should be)

yet terran can lose their entire army to a couple burrowed banelings, fungals, storms.

On April 28 2012 10:14 Plansix wrote:


The statements don't need to be qualified, they are simple and easy to follow. They state that the "perception that terran players are fleeing the ladder, when that's not true at all." It is not true, terrans are not fleeing the ladder. It is a myth, created because terrans who want to argue that terran is under powered at specific skill levels. The reason this myth is so appealing is that it allows them to argue that their race is under powered, even when professional terrans are winning or ranking highly tournaments.

On April 28 2012 10:20 Berk wrote:


So ask yourself, why won't blizzard release the figures. Plus the sample size of sc2ranks makes it a data source you shouldn't discount entirely. There are on 2 way to judge this correctly.
Firstly quantifiable data, blizzard in fact have told us nothing, nada. We have heard their conclusions only. You can't trust data interpretations from a bias source because the stats can be spun anyway you like. For (an extreme) example if TvP is 50% win rate but 100% terran wins were in the first 15 min and protoss 100% after that, the only stat blizzard will give you is the overall win rate. It make them look like they've done thing right. The matchup would be broken but hey they wouldn't wanna look bad now, would they...

Secondly, real world experience. Well that side is well documented here in the forums.

I'm not saying bnet players are right, however they would be very correct in trusting in data rather than an interpretation of data. What I am saying is that if the data was released then real conclusions can be drawn.
With most computer games this isn't an issue, however blizzard have pitched this as an esport. I find this shocking when we cannot get our hands on basic numbers. No other competitive game (in the larger sense of the word, not just pc games) I can think of hides the data in such a way.

On April 28 2012 10:24 Zealot Lord wrote:


Lack of micro needed in late game protoss is only true on lower levels of ladder, the higher the level (and especially at pro level) the difference really isn't that huge. If you watch the apm of players like puzzle/parting/MC(in his prime) in big battles of PvT, their APM is every bit as high, if not exceeding the terran counterpart. Of course, a few players isn't necessarily representative of the whole race, but to suggest tosses don't need to micro much is the furthest thing from the truth.

Anyways, I'm not here to debate that which race is harder to micro or what not, but I want to list what high level tosses do (to dispel the myth that all they do just is "a-move"). First is that they constantly have to rearrange their army formation even in mid battle to have the zealots in front (granted much easier to do with blink, but terrans don't have that to worry about that as their units are all ranged), forcefielding when there is zealot charge against a kiting bio group is honestly pretty difficult and takes quite a lot of skill, as its very easy to have the ff's hurt the zealots instead. Stalkers blinking+targeting medivacs; furthermore, now that so many terrans use the floating factory to mess up the unit AI, stalkers/archons can't even be a-moved in the first place.

Now the next two I have only seen on rare occasions (needs to be done more for sure imo), but moving the guardian shield sentry with the zealots to shield them and not the stalkers/collosus, and also having the collosus targeting the bigger clump of units when opponent has like half concave coverage. And of course there is high templar micro, but thats pretty much the identical with the ghost, so there's not much to talk about. Basically the only unit that tosses don't really control during battles are the zealots (aside from pulling back from time to time), and while one may think thats already bad enough since chargelots with upgrades are pretty tough, but don't forget that unlike terran where you can 'tap macro' during battles, protoss has to look away from the screen to warp in units. If you consider that, then tosses having that leeway in not needing to micro zealots is somewhat a fair trade off I think.

Again, I want to emphasize this isn't an argument which race has to micro more - its just that I'm tired of people saying that PvT late game toss doesn't need any micro/control and is all a-moving to victory, when its nothing like that at all.

On April 28 2012 10:27 celeryman wrote:


Oh my, this typifies exactly why your thinking on this issue makes everyone else go insane.... "statements don't need to be qualified...they are simple." Well here's the thing. The statements quoted above, don't have any quantification to them at all. They don't even make blanket statements about numbers. Nobody's arguing with the actual numbers posted when they post numbers. They are arguing with unqualified statements made by a forum moderator.

And this red herring of a 3rd part site is getting really old. All you do is repeat yourself but when it boils down to it the crux of your argument is a simple appeal to authority. I suppose that makes sense when there's not competing data. But in that case there was. Grandmaster ladder data: simple, verifiable, objective, easily accessed. No third party site. Multiple people posted it in response.